#fivegoodtweets

There's been a lot written about writing tweets that get retweets or followers (or both). What I haven't seen covered exhaustively is how to tweet purposefully. How do we, as individuals outside of a corporate interest, consistently create microcontent that provides meaning and value to a self-selected audience of consumers? I'll leave it to sociologists to define what sort of implicit social contract exists between followers and the followed, but I'm a believer in increased retweets and following being an outcome of well-intentioned tweeting, as opposed to the objective.

I've been working recently under the mantra "five good tweets" daily. What makes a good tweet? I don't have a rigorous code, but I notice myself focusing on a few principles as I progress through the day:

1. Evaluate the environment (physical / digital) from the perspective of your followers. I haven't gone as far as to create specific personas of followers, but I try to pay close attention to who's following me and why. Every so often, I'll spend additional time exploring the social graphs of some of my followers. What am I saying that got their attention in the first place? What am I looking at today that they would find interesting?
2. Sift for value. Lots of things are interesting, but I try to aggressively filter for those items that will have a beneficial impact for a reader. Look for the nuggets that: are  immediately useful (tools, approaches, emerging practices); provide a unique, new or contrarian perspective on accepted wisdom; or, serve as a spark for future creativity and improvisation.
3. Trust the idea. If a concept has made it past my internal censors to reach this point, it's time to let it do the work (in 140 characters or less). Don't hard sell: it turns followers off and demonstrates a lack of confidence in your perspective and voice. On the flipside, don't undersell...there was a reason you selected this idea out of all the noise you could have squaked about. Let the idea write the tweet: where's the value? what will resonate with your followers? why does the idea WANT to be understood?

So, that's it. Hopefully not earth-shattering, and probably said better elsewhere.

Looking back, have I acheived my "five good tweets" goal? Hardly! Somedays I struggle to find anything relevant, and I end up silent or pushing dreck (sorry about that). That doesn't reduce its aspirational value, and it ensures that I'm doing my part to maintain the Twitter-mediated relationships that I have with a host of intelligent, dynamic humans.

The approach has other intrinsic rewards. Beyond extending my peer group into diverse and remarkable areas, I find that I'm better at conscious observation and filtering. It's easy to to be a passive consumer of the Internet firehose; it's much harder to stick your head in the onrush and find importance. Asking the question "is this worthy of one of my five good tweets" helps me to more efficiently filter out the trivial and get to ideas that are relevant to both me and my peers.

Programming as Artform

Fascinating post from joe evans @techcrunch (http://tcrn.ch/xPPEUX) on the cost/benefit of pair programming. While not the focus of the article, his observations about programming as artform have been on my mind lately as I've been working thru the CodeYear program at Codeacademy. The processes is helping me recall forgotten skills and ways of thinking, and is introducing me to new concepts and approaches. However, no matter how hard i work at it, I'll never come near to being a talented developer. 

There is deep creativity involved in writing exceptional code. I can look at an object or module and appreciate the nuance and insight that went into its creation. While I might be able to write something that accomplished similar objectives (probably not), it certainly wouldn't be as effective and efficient (or elegant). It would be a kludge par excellence.

I think the best analogy is of programming as a functional art. If you think about pottery or glass blowing or woodworking or photography, there are a lot of people who've taken a few classes and can create a vase or a bookcase. My son and I spent weekends this past summer building a bookcase from plans in a woodworking magazine. It's functional, but as hard as we tried, you can take one look at it and know that it was the work of amateurs. Similarly, there are very few people that have risen to the level of turning these disciplines into "art".

Programming artists, you are appreciated! Thank you for taking our half-baked ideas and making them beautiful.

spring morning

spring morning
delivering a more compelling entrance
warming the back of my neck nape
sunscreen will be in order soon
protection for this winter-withered mass
the wan pall of non-dairy creamer
getting around to making a point
but not quite—still
i am loved by the sun

aroma of spring’s first hard thaw
120-plus nights of defrosting dog shit
temporarily holding hostage promises interred
within soft, damp front/back yards and gardens
remembered
but not quite—still
i am loved by the sun

broad magenta-edged luminous green superheros
groan forth from their villainous graves
lazy autumn thoughts about last rites
about futility
tease a humile smile onto my pasty countenance
all have survived
but not quite—still
i am loved by the sun

thursday 10 apr (bethanie's birthday)

younger sister’s birthday
the one i fought with
tormented
cried with
fomented rebellion with (failed)
always fomenting

like good cheese, improving with the passing of time
in dark places

melancholy is a term useful for the description of poetry
too shopworn for the construction of poetry
a critics’ word
prepackaged in its own gestalt
a can of linguistic Spam

yet i am enjoying it fried (with eggs) this morning
almost 42 sitting miles apart from 39
contemplating the uncataloged natural forces
pushing us apart, physical distance once again providing
a frictionless vacuum
child’s experiments
with emotional fields of common polarity
pushing us apart

i miss you
i miss the relationship i imagined for us
the straight line i drew from our common
childhood to what should be ours
(not the un/shared present)

today,
i wish for you all the non-dairy cheese (fomented soy)
and joy that you can consume

some day,
our glorious rebellion will succeed
che and cheese will be made proud

happy birthday.

two trains

south:

red line
longitudinally bisecting
bisecting the city
until you leave the city

south into the urbanity

where it forks in two
like a fork in the road
requiring a road map to confirm
reconfirm: to validate bearings

like the road map itself
bright red line indicative of
representative of an important
roadway intersecting with

intersecting with

the perpendicular red and blue solid
and black crosshatched lines
symbolic of this red line
left to points east: right towards the american archetype

or maybe a snake’s tongue

too much vanity and fear in the young man
(old boy really)
no questions asked continuing his ride south
to where he thought he was going

the train emerges from the bowels
of a successful 20th century capitalist society
into the harsh daylight
of a successful 20th century capitalist society

he’s lost, he knows it
he thinks he’s the only representative of
ambassador of brave new world ancestral migration
remaining on the train

they’re staring at him
boring holes in him
mocking him
them with their dark eyes

anger, amusement, resentment, curiosity:
who can say what the non-
anglo saxon mind
might be thinking

certainly not this old boy

outside, ruins of a society that used to be
desolation remaining
resulting from an unwillingness
to share

rejection of empathy

it wasn’t meant to end this way
his trip to the end of the line
was supposed to be
through better neighborhoods


north:

halfway across the human accumulation
of worry and regret
riding the evening commuter

it’s a quiet journey
punctuated by the rustle and snap of
journals, tribunes, times

serving crisp counterpoint to the
basso thrum of steel wheels
rolling on steel rails

no-one staring
they know he belongs here (or think they know)
understand their common objective

home without incident

nearing his locality of
shrubbery and unlocked doors
(not everyone of course: you can’t be too careful)

he feels the anxiety creeping
creeping (again) up the back of his throat
on its way to overwhelm his mind

same fear as before (as always)
but older, more worldly, fat
on a lifetime of unfulfillment

having to turn sideways to pass through doors

your safety is our highest priority
together we can make us all more secure
the recorded father figure smoothly entones

the statements a nightly mantra
an unachievable ohm
never within reach

not for him
nor for his fellow fortunate
on this ride home

safe. he’s back home safe